Butler, Josephine Elizabeth (Elizabeth)

1828 - Butler was born and raised in the household of an upper- middle-class family: her uncle was the leader of the Whig party earlier in the century.

- Butler was neither the first nor the last woman to examine the relationship between sex, sexual behavior, and economics. Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Martineau, Frances Wright, and Margaret Fuller had all expressed the idea that women were divided into two classes by their sexuality.

- Butler's involvement in the sex trade began very simply: she wanted to "rescue fallen women" for Jesus. She would visit prisons and hospitals and take women into her home where she nursed the sick, gave the dying comfortable surroundings, and provided job skills and a job to the able-bodied.